Riding the long, dusty trail through 50s Westerns.

Meet Jack Young.

Recently, I’ve had the extreme pleasure of speaking with Mr. Jack N. Young, a Navy frogman turned stuntman who worked on many of the movies this blog holds dear. Look him up, it’s incredible.

“Blackjack” Young, as he became known, was a busy utility stuntman. He’d hire on for a film and provide what they needed, when they needed it. He worked frequently at Old Tucson, both in the films shot there and as part of their stunt show, and would eventually help run the place.

Transcribing it all is taking a while, and I want to hold onto some of it for the book, but this stuff’s too good to sit on. Among the many films he worked on is my favorite Western, Rio Bravo (1959), which was shot at Old Tucson.

Jack Young: “During the shootout at the end, I came out of the barn and got shot before they blew it up… Ricky Nelson was a good kid. I play harmonica, and we’d sit around after work or something and sing. God, that kid was good!”

Young: “Dean shot me in the saloon and I fell out of the loft. (Jack’s stunt inspired the foreign poster above.) We gaffed our own stunts. It was a whole bunch of cardboard boxes. We’d put ‘em together — about three-by-three, probably 10 of ‘em, with a rope tied around them to hold ‘em steady — and then put a tarp over it. Works perfect. I worked before the airbag. I’d do a roof fall, up to about 10 feet, without a pad. I’d hit the ground rolling, almost like a tumbler. I never got hurt.”

Talking to Jack has been an honor, and he’s provided a lot of insight into how these films were made. Watch for more, including a bit on City Of Bad Men (1953), which just showed up in my mailbox today.

I looked at his list of credits and was completely knocked out–obviously. What a great career and what a treasure trove of info he will be–and part of some of the all time great and most iconic moments, like the one in RIO BRAVO that is discussed here.

Boy, I can’t wait for your interview, Toby. It’s going to be totally fascinating. I had the pleasure of e-mailing Jack to ask him about working with Ben Johnson. He had some very nice words about Ben and sent me a photo he had taken of him on the set of The Sacketts. You can see my little story about that at http://benjohnsonfanpage.shutterfly.com — scroll down to January 17.

Fun stuff, Toby. Speaking of Ben Johnson, I caught an episode of the half-hour Hitchcock show last week and Johnson played a sheriff,who has to look after a couple of local desert geezers who live in a funky cabin in the middle of nowhere. One of the two of them is played by William Demarest. Not exactly great, as episodes of the series go, but it was nice to imagine Johnson playing a sheriff in a TV series of that sort, a Coogan or McCloud..

That Hitchcock episode is entitled “And the Desert Shall Blossom,” which ends with a typically Hitchcockian blackly humorous twist. The other old timer is Roscoe Ates, who I’m sure many of you will remember as a stuttering comic sidekick from many a B-western. He did a lot of movies with Eddie Dean. Ben’s only regular series role was in The Monroes and apparently he didn’t enjoy the experience as he stated in interviews that after doing it he realized he didn’t want to do another series.